“I WAS FROM THE BEGINNING SACRIFICED TO A PRINCELY CAPRICE”

BAUER, Karoline. Memoirs of Karoline Bauer from the German. London: Remington, 1885. Four volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter tan calf, gilt-decorated spine, raised bands, black leather labels, top edges gilt, marbled boards and endpapers, white ribbon markers. $500.

Second edition, of German actress Karoline Bauer’s 19th-century memoirs of her tempestuous life, providing an intriguing record of her times.

Scorning a Prussian prince, Bauer was engaged to a supposed Count Samoilow of St. Petersburg before he was revealed as a notorious impersonator. A morganatic marriage—denying her or her offspring an elevation—to Prince Leopold of Belgium (later King of the Belgians) as he schemed for the Greek crown, was "as brief as it was unhappy" (Magnusson, 117). Bauer went back onto the stage until her 1844 marriage to a Polish count. Armorial bookplates of Mrs. J. Laurens Van Alen.

A lovely set.